They believe that shopping for groceries at Whole Foods instead of Safeway or Food Lion or Giant or Wal-Mart is the politically correct thing to do.

They probably believe that the President and CEO of Whole Foods is a liberal like themselves.

They of course would be wrong.

John Mackey is instead a libertarian with right-wing tendencies.

Mackey says that Milton Friedman is his hero.

He's a devotee of Ayn Rand.

He's opposed to national health insurance.

He's a union buster.

And he has recently endorsed a book published by the libertarian Cato Institute whose author concludes that no corporation should ever be prosecuted for crimes ­ no matter the corporation, no matter the crime.

The book ­ 'Trapped: When Acting Ethically is Against the Law' ­ is written by Georgetown University Professor John Hasnas.

"John Hasnas shows that new laws and regulations too often force CEOs to choose between acting legally and acting ethically," Mackey says in a blurb on the back cover.

Unlike most books on white collar crime, which tend to rehash bland academic theories or cut corporate crimes of years past and paste them with dogmatic rants, 'Trapped' is actually a compelling read with an original idea sprinkled here and there.

Hasnas' big idea is that the whole system of prosecuting corporate crime is undermining the liberal principles built into traditional criminal law and designed to protect individuals against the power of the state.

The result is that corporations are forced to turn on their own employees to save their own corporate hide.

Hasnas is a hard line libertarian. He worked for a time as lawyer for the politically aggressive, right-wing, and privately-held Koch Industries, ­ one of the nation's largest oil companies.

And instead of concluding that we should fix the criminal justice system so that corporations and federal prosecutors can no longer gang up on individual employees, ­ he concludes in his book that corporations should never be criminally prosecuted ­ ever.

No matter the crime.

No matter the corporation.

Hasnas wants to do away with corporate criminal liability.

If there is a crime committed by someone within the corporation, criminally prosecute the individual, he says.

But a corporation can't commit a crime and should not be criminally prosecuted.

Ever.

We wanted to know: does Whole Foods' CEO Mackey agree ­ corporations should never be criminally prosecuted?

No matter the crime?

No matter the corporation?

Does the libertarian John Mackey support the big business funded Cato Institute and its right wing ideology with cash ­ or just with quotes?

martes, junio 27, 2006

Occidental is one of the worst corporate polluters in the world. In its most scandalous case, an Occidental subsidiary dumped thousands of tons of toxic chemical waste near the residential area of Love Canal, New York, causing birth defects, miscarriages, and incidences of cancer in the nearby community. But Gore remained a friend of the company. And the company, a good friend to Al Gore.

Despite being a predominantly Republican supporter, Occidental funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to the Clinton/Gore Democrats over the course of their two-term administration. In return, Gore maneuvered to facilitate Occidental’s acquisition of oil drilling rights in the Elk Hills National Petroleum Reserve outside Bakersfield, California. Long held as a federal oil resource, Elk Hills represented the largest turnover of public lands to a private corporation in American history. It tripled Occidental’s U.S. petroleum reserves, increasing the company’s stock value by ten percent. Gore later admitted to controlling between $250,000 – $500,000 worth of shares through a family held trust.

In the 1992 campaign, Gore used the environment as a sledgehammer against Bush and Quayle. One issue raised over and over was a hazardous waste incinerator slated for East Liverpool, Ohio, which Gore vowed to block. But within months of taking office, the EPA, run by former Gore staffer Carol Browner, reversed course and issued a permit for the deadly plant. This stunning betrayal was a sign of things to come. It was swiftly followed by capitulations on the Everglades, ancient forests, fuel efficiency standards, pesticides in foods, wetland protection, oil development in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, subsidies for nuclear power, organic food standards and ozone-depleting chemicals. And on and on.

Olympia, WA, Sept. 19 2000-Some 200 activists have occupied Al Gore’s offices since 12 Noon today and vow to stay through the night and beyond until the vice president comes out against Occidental Petroleum’s drilling project on the U’wa people ’s sacred lands in Colombia. Mr. Gore has deep personal and financial ties to Occidental, including family investments of up to $1 million in the company.

For thousands of years, the Kitanemuk Indians made their home in the Elk Hills of central California. Come February 2001, the last of the 100 burial grounds, holy places and other archaeological sites of the Kitanemuks will be obliterated by the oil drilling of Occidental Petroleum Company. Oxy's plans will "destroy forever the evidence that we once existed on this land," according to Dee Dominguez, a Kitanemuk whose great grandfather was a signatory to the 1851 treaty that surrendered the Elk Hills.

Occidental's planned drilling of the Elk Hills doesn't only threaten the memory of the Kitanemuk. Environmentalists say a rare species of fox, lizard and the kangaroo rat would also be threatened by Oxy's plans. A lawsuit has been filed under the Endangered Species Act. But none of that has given pause to Occidental or the politician who helped engineer the sale of the drilling rights to the federally-owned Elk Hills. That politician is AL GORE.

One of the world's hottest battles between indigenous groups and multinational oil companies is heating up in Colombia, where Occidental Petroleum is seeking to drill on land claimed by the 5,000-member U'wa tribe. Early this year, the Colombian government deployed several hundred soldiers to guard workers building a road to the multibillion-dollar project. That led to a clash in February when security forces used tear gas to break up an anti-Occidental demonstration of several hundred Indians. Three children reportedly drowned when they fell into a river as they fled from government troops. The U'was won at least a temporary victory on March 31, when a Colombian court ordered the government to stop Occidental from drilling on tribal land.

Meanwhile, an international campaign opposing Occidental's plan is also picking up steam. On April 28 about 100 demonstrators turned up at Occidental's annual meeting in Santa Monica and called on the company to halt the project. Activists have also picketed the offices of Fidelity Investments, which owns about 8 percent of Occidental's shares, and criticized Vice President Al Gore, whose family owns at least a quarter of a million dollars' worth of Occidental stock.

lunes, junio 26, 2006

"Sustainable development" has always been a chameleon-like concept, easily used to mystify environmental destruction. Agribusiness has a particularly talent for such greenwashing. Its latest trick is to present industrial monocultures as sustainable. Today such corporate-backed projects are popping up across the world, ranging from “sustainable palm oil plantations” to “sustainable salmon farms”. This is only to be expected from agribusiness. But what is more disturbing however is that NGOs and farmers’ groups are also participating in these corporate projects.

GRAIN takes a critical look at some of these projects and the new disguises, new players and new language that they utilise for the same old purpose of turning our food and biodiversity into global commodities.

sábado, junio 24, 2006

For most of the year, this 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tenn., provides open, grassy pasture for a herd of cows. But for a short time each summer, the idyllic setting is taken over by a different kind of herd: the tens of thousands of fans who descend for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. The now-legendary event features long-haired musician-types, massive stages, sprawling campgrounds, and vendors hawking all manner of food and crafts. As Thom Yorke -- the frontman for this year's headliner, Radiohead -- put it to the writhing masses waving glow-sticks under a star-speckled sky last week, "Now this is what we call a festival."

But with some 80,000 people camping out for the four-day, 24-hour jam-band showcase, whose other featured acts included Tom Petty, Phil Lesh, and Beck, Bonnaroo is much more than a festival. In the words of psych-folk singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart, "It's an opportunity to live in a temporary village centered around music, expression, awareness, consciousness -- all the goodies!" The festival literally becomes a community -- complete with residential areas, trailers with running water, port-o-potties, wi-fi and cell-phone service, security officials, and medical facilities -- and deals with many of the issues a small city might. Which is why organizers made a conscious effort to reduce its environmental footprint this year, and have even grander plans for the future.

So how do you convince throngs of half-naked, half-baked music lovers to go green? By showing the way. To reduce global-warming impacts, biodiesel generators powered all of the non-music stages, as well as the spotlights used at night and some of the golf carts zipping along the dust-covered "roads" between camping areas. 'Rooers were given the opportunity to purchase Cool Tags to offset their travel. In an area of the grounds known as "Planet Roo," a solar-powered stage was flanked by vendors selling organic foods and natural products, and booths manned by nonprofits ranging from national groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute to advocates working on local issues like mountaintop-removal mining.

Clean Vibes: the quicker picker-upper.

Then there was the eco-army dealing with waste: some 600 tons of it. Clean Vibes -- the official "pick up the mess organization," according to head picker-upper Anna Borofsky -- set up 2,000 trash barrels and 2,000 recycling bins throughout the grounds, carting filled bags to sorting facilities and composting areas. By recycling plastic bottles and aluminum cans, Bonnaroo officials hoped to divert more than 60 percent of the event's waste from landfills. An organization called WastAway will also contribute, by melting down and compacting 250 tons of the non-recyclable, non-biodegradable garbage into "fluff" that can be used for park benches and construction.

"These festivals are a kind of microcosm of the real world," Borofsky said, adding that the Bonnaroo community serves as an example of what's possible. "By showing people that [this community can run] in a sustainable way, then we can apply that to the big picture."

Spanning all generations, Bonnaroo's "citizens" ranged from hippie to hipster, but Borofsky says she's noticed more of a "hippie-crite" presence at many of the large music festivals. "[We're trying to] teach people that if we don't respect the land that we're allowed to have these amazing gatherings on, then we're not going to be able to have these amazing gatherings anymore."

viernes, junio 23, 2006

DIGG IT!

Diggis a technology news web page that combines blogging, non-hierarchical editorial control, social bookmarking and RSS. Users submit news items or web links that they find interesting, and these are then promoted to the headlines through a cyber-plebiscite of sorts in which the readers- and not some editor- decide what content gets highlighted.

All of Digg's content is freely accessible, but in order to modify that content- by voting (digging) for the most popular submitted items and/or add comments to them- one has to register as a user. Currently there are some 250,000 registered users. News and web resources featured in Digg span from music and games to cyber-censorship in China and the future of the internet, as well as the latest news from Google, My Space, Microsoft, Netscape, Yahoo and much more.

When it was born in 2004, Digg featured no advertising, but given its explosive popularity, its founders have now endowed it with ads through Google AdSense. It's called Digg and not Dig because the dig.com domain belonged to the Walt Disney corporation.

Digg is going to unveil a bodacious upgrade next Monday. Here's some info about it, taken from the excellent Tech Crunch blog:

In addition to a redesign (that retains the essential Digg “experience”), Digg is adding a number of news categories beyond technology. Topics are grouped into six “containers”, including technology, entertainment, gaming, science, world & business, and online video. The default view on Digg is still the technology container, although users can change that view and can also deselect individual topics within containers to further refine what they see on the home page.

There are other significant feature additions as well (we go through all of them in the podcast). In addition to seeing what your friends have dugg, users can also just see stories more than one friend has dugg, further filtering new stories to what they might really want to see. Also, changing views between top stories and new stories won’t require a page refresh - Digg has added Ajax features (sparingly, they stress) to switch quickly between headlines and new stories, and among topics/containers.

Digg is looking more and more like the newspaper of the web, and is challenging even the New York Times on page views (Digg surpassed rival Slashdot long ago).

About 800,000 unique visitors come to Digg every day, generating 9 million plus page views. The site is doubling in traffic every two months. And the amazing thing is that Digg does all of this with just 15 employees.

Digg has raised $2.8 million in venture funding from Greylock and Omidyar as well as angel investors Marc Andreesen, Reid Hoffman and Ron Conway. Given the tremendous growth and passionate users, something tells me they are going to have a rather large liquidity event.

Those who have followed my work in the last few years know full well that I harbor a healthy dose of skepticism about enlightened eco-capitalism. However, I find the new forward-looking eco-capitalists a lot more insteresting to talk to than many smart asses in the left who know nothing about ecology. The strident anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist discourses that one hears very often in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in Latin America are often very unhelpful when it comes to figuring ways out of the ecological quagmire the planet is stuck in. The sad truth is that the left has often been as guilty as the capitalists of wrecking the planet. Anyway, that been said, check out this recent post fromGrist:

Contrary to popular belief, most developers don't bulldoze Bambi solely to satisfy their innate avarice. Instead, they pave the Earth at the bidding of their clients -- by which I mean lenders and investors, not homebuyers, office tenants, or other such "end users." Regardless of how exciting and cool a development proposal is, it just won't happen if some faceless banker doesn't advance a big pile of cash.

As rapacious national banks swallow smaller, local competitors by the dozen, these lending decisions have increasingly fallen to bankers blindly applying generic guidelines. The result: a paint-by-numbers landscape of interchangeable (but financially safe) subdivisions, strip malls, and office parks. Any developer who dared to innovate would have to do so on his own dime -- and sure enough, many pioneering examples of New Urbanism have been backed by "nontraditional" investors like old-money families, large corporations (like Microsoft, Disney, EDS, and Ebsco), and even charitable foundations. Despite growing interest in socially responsible investing, few investors have thought of how to clean up the picture in the building industry -- source of, say some, half of America's greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, Philip Langdon of New Urban News reports on a new generation of private-equity investment funds that have started up to match socially responsible real estate investors and leading-edge developers. Green developer extraordinaire Jonathan Rose of New York sees his new $100 million fund as an investor alternative to "buying stocks in REITs [Real Estate Investment Trusts, publicly traded corporations whose primary business is real estate] which are based on sprawl." Perhaps the most promising is the $100 million Green Living Fund, based in Santa Cruz and launched by Kacey Fitzpatrick:

Fitzpatrick, cofounder and vice president of sustainability at the Green Living Fund, said her pool is the result of a desire "to promote the right kind of development." She observes: "Our goal is to promote the creation of vibrant, pedestrian-oriented, walkable communities with a mix of uses and a mix of housing types and incomes. Transit is a key piece of what we are doing." The fund will use "the LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] standards for Neighborhood Development as the criteria for our initial assessment of a location," she says. Buildings will have to qualify for at least a LEED-Silver designation.

Whereas Rose hopes to raise funds from private and nonprofit investors, Fitzpatrick (an architect by training who hopes to make a bigger impact) hopes to gain substantial funding from public pension funds. If these funds successfully quantify the financial benefits of investing in green development, they could attract more investment, thereby mainstreaming now-unconventional forms of development.

I often liken the process of changing the way America builds cities to turning around a giant ship; many will be frustrated with the slow pace, but taking a trillion-dollar industry optimized to efficiently turn forests and fields into sprawl at the rate of five acres a minute means a lot of change. If investors -- the ones paying for the bulldozers -- catch on, we can count on those bulldozers being used far more gently in the future.

miércoles, junio 21, 2006

Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft® Office

Microsoft and Creative Commons have teamed up to release the Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office, a copyright licensing tool that enables the easy addition of Creative Commons licenses to works created in popular Microsoft Office applications. The software is available free of charge at Microsoft Office Online and will enable the 400 million users of Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint to easily select Creative Commons licenses from directly within the application they are working in. The first document to be CC-licensed using this tool is the text of Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil's iSummit keynote speech in English and Portugese.

Creative Commons and the Fedora Project have teamed up for the Open Video Contest taking place now through July 20, 2006. To participate, submit a video that explores freedom and openness. Entries should be 30 seconds or less, in Ogg Theora format, and be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license. The winner will receive Fedora-branded Sony Camcorder and the first 150 submissions will receive a pair of handsome Fedora flip flops.

martes, junio 20, 2006

Some see mobile phones, embedded computers, wireless computing and cheap cameras combining to eliminate both privacy and shared experiences of public space, to, in short, undermine urban life.

But such erosion of city life isn't the only possibility. Others see new technologies as restoring the ability of highly mobile and atomized 21st Century city-dwellers to connect to one another, to become better citizens, and to recreate communities.

A whole mess of technologies need to be considered, but it's widely agreed that there are at least six to watch:

1) Mobile phones (which are increasingly mobile computers connected to the Internet, often with cameras) and other wireless technologies;

4) Social software programs and models of cooperation (which allow large numbers of people to socialize and create information collaboratively).

5) Better databases and ever-lower-cost computing;

6) Ubiquitous computing, cheap sensors, and RFID "smart dust."

Put these together and what we get are some novel, potentially revolutionary new ways to inhabit space.

The first is the making of what have been called smart places: neighborhoods where information is tied to places, and accessible through your mobile. In the imaginatively-dwarfed standard iteration, this means your phone will tell you when the store you pass has a sale on, but it might just as well warn you when you start down a street with a high crime-rate, or buzz you when a critical mass of friends are at a nearby coffee shop.

The second is the layering of reputation capital over smart places. It's one thing to have a store invade your phone with ads for its sales. It's another altogether to be able to see what people in your online community think of the service and prices there. It's still a third to be able to access a layer of citizen-created civic data, so that when you walk by your favorite historic building you can find out where the renovation plans stand.

A third is the illumination of flows -- the making visible of the invisible. Cities are, after all, essentially giant engines sucking in materials on the one end and spewing out waste on the other: cheap sensors and digital maps can let us see those materials and wastes as they flow by, helping us mitigate our own ecological wake, certainly, but also helping us protect ourselves from pollution and other health risks.

…"intelligent environments" could be the next big thing. Instead of being mute, your surroundings will tell you about themselves, and what they offer. Tourist spots will want to trumpet their attractions, and places such as the Tower of London will be ideal for hosting "located plays". Advertising hoardings will offer one-click ordering: you will be able to buy things, pay by phone, and have them delivered to your home.

All this started to become a reality with location-based services, or LBS for short. The most obvious are "finder applications" - where is the nearest pub, bank etc - and "navigation applications", which offer driving or walking directions. These typically use location information derived from cellular phone networks, which is not very precise. However, they could use more accurate GPS…

RFID chips will become very important because they are small, don't need a power supply, and can be read at a distance. Today, RFID chips are mainly used for transport cards (eg bus passes) and for tagging goods on their way to supermarkets. However, they could easily be used to tag buildings, advertising hoardings, paintings in art galleries, almost anything.

TAKE ACTION: USDA CLOSE TO APPROVING GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PLUMSThe United Sates Department of Agriculture (USDA) is now accepting public comments regarding the commercial approval of a genetically engineered plum, known as "C5." The approval of C5 would be the first widely released genetically engineered (GE) tree in the United States. Approval of C5 will also pave the way for more GE tree and fruit varieties, including peaches, cherries, and apricots. GE tree pollen can drift for several miles, leading to contamination of neighboring organic crops and indigenous trees. The USDA is currently accepting public comments on this issue.Learn more and Take Action: http://organicconsumers.org/plum_alert.htm

L.A. POLICE INVADE NATION'S LARGEST COMMUNITY GARDEN Armed police stormed a community garden in South Central Los Angeles this week, arresting 25 people including actress Daryl Hannah. The 14 acre plot of land, tended by over 350 neighborhood fruit and vegetable farmers for a decade, is the largest urban community garden in the country, and a symbol of hope for the embattled South Central neighborhood. Although the highly successful garden provides affordable, mostly organic food for low-income residents in this economically depressed area, a ten-year ownership dispute over the land has led to a dramatic standoff between neighborhood residents and the powerful real estate lobby of Los Angeles. Despite massive public opposition, multi-millionaire real estate developer Ralph Horowitz obtained a court order to pave over the community garden and replace it with an industrial warehouse. After back-tracking on an offer to sell the 14 acre plot to neighborhood residents for $16 million, Horowitz called in the police and bulldozers to clear the property of inhabitants. Neighborhood farmers and residents, along with the L.A. organic community, have vowed to keep up the struggle and save the community garden. Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_756.cfm

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SUCCESSFUL LAWSUIT FORCES EPA TO PHASE OUT DANGEROUS PESTICIDEA lawsuit filed by the United Farmworkers of America against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has forced the agency to begin phasing out a highly toxic organophosphate pesticide that has contaminated food and poisoned farmworkers. The pesticide, azinphos-methyl ("AZM"), is used on a variety of food crops, including potatoes, cranberries, and peaches. AZM is a highly toxic neurotoxin derived from nerve agents used during World War II. In 2001, the EPA found that AZM posed unacceptable risks to farmworkers, but due to industry pressure, the agency kept it on the market. "This pesticide has put thousands of workers at risk of serious illness every year," said Erik Nicholson of the United Farmworkers of America. The EPA will phase out AZM over the next four years. http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_748.cfm

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TIP OF THE WEEK: MAINTAINING A HEALTHY ORGANIC LAWN

There's no need to water more than an inch per week. Over-watering is unhealthy for lawns and invites lawn disease. Placing a tuna can under the sprinkler will help gauge water depth. Water early in the morning to avoid excessive evaporation from midday sun.

Taller grass has deeper roots, causing the plants to need less watering. Set mower height to 3 inches and cut grass when it reaches 4.5 inches.

Each time you mow, try alternating your pattern and path. This prevents the soil from compacting.

Soil biota helps provide a stable healthy lawn. If your lawn has been treated chemically, it will take a couple of years for the soil microorganisms to rebuild.

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AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION ASKS GOVERNMENT TO REGULATE SALTIn an unprecedented move, the American Medical Association (AMA) voted on June 13 to call on the U.S. government to require salt warning labels on food products and to cut salt content in manufactured foods by 50% within a decade. The AMA, the largest group of physicians in the U.S., is also asking the Food and Drug Administration to revoke salt's status as a food that is "generally recognized as safe," noting there is overwhelming medical evidence that high salt intake dramatically increases risk of heart disease, hypertension and stroke. Heart disease is the nation's leading cause of death. Foods that would require warning labels would include everything from conventional hot dogs to some canned soups. The Food Products Association, a trade group for the food and beverage manufacturing industry, and one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington D.C. said the new policy is "misguided," claiming there is not enough scientific evidence tying salt to negative health effects. Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_753.cfm

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NATION'S LARGEST DAIRIES TRYING TO AVOID MONSANTO'S BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE The largest retailers and distributors of milk and dairy products in the U.S. are considering going rBGH-free. According to the trade journal Dairy Food and Market Analyst, Wal-Mart and Dean Foods have begun pressing suppliers for a larger supply of rBGH-free milk, in response to increasing consumer demand. The synthetic hormone rBGH is a genetically engineered drug designed to make dairy cows produce more milk. The controversial hormone has been banned in Europe and Canada due to its links to increased risks for breast and colon cancer and antibiotic resistance. Despite these bans, 18% of U.S. dairy cows, especially those on factory-style farms, continue to be injected with the drug. Over the past few years, millions of consumers have switched to milk and dairy products from organic farms, which ban the use of rBGH and antibiotics. Starbucks, by the way, is still serving up coffee drinks across the country that are laced with rBGH--another good reason to patronize local independently owned coffee shops that offer organic and Fair Trade alternatives. Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_747.cfm

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SOME MAJOR U.S. DAIRIES GOING rBGH-FREE OVER THE PAST YEAR

April, 2005 - Tillamook, the second largest producer of block cheese in the U.S., goes rBGH-free for their cheeses.

COFFEE PROTECTS DRINKERS' LIVERS: A study published in the journal "Archives of Internal Medicine" indicates that coffee may greatly reduce the risk of liver damage in those who consume alcohol regularly. Every daily cup of coffee reduced the incidence of cirrhosis, a condition that destroys liver tissue, by 22 percent, according to researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program. However, Dr. Arthur Klatsky, the leader of the study, said the results "should not be interpreted as giving a license to drink without worry, because of all the other problems connected with drinking." adding, "the only proper advice is to drink less." Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_751.cfm----------------------

BEER INGREDIENT REDUCES PROSTATE CANCER RISK: A new study from researchers at Oregon State University reveals that a natural ingredient found in beer may reduce the risk of prostate cancer. The ingredient, found in the hops used to brew beer, is xanthohumol, and belongs to a group of plant compounds called flavonoids that can trigger the death of cancer cells along the surface of the prostate gland. Researchers are quick to point out the amount of xanthohumol in beer is far too low to be of any benefit, estimating it would require consuming a case of beer per day to activate the positive effects. German brewers have already responded by creating a beer with ten times the amount of xanthohumol, marketing it as a "healthy beer."Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_761.cfm